N.M. hotel owner forced English only, Anglicized workers’ names

On the heels of an apology from Dallas’ police chief over officers issuing citations to drivers for not speaking English, a similar anti-Latino incident has surfaced. The Associated Press reports that a New Mexico hotel owner forced workers not to speak Spanish in front of him and Anglicized Spanish names.

Melanie Dabovich’s story describes the hotel owner as Larry Whitten, 63, a “tough-talking former Marine” from Texas, and the community of Taos as a place “where Spanish language, culture and traditions have a long and revered history.”

Whitten said, “I’m just doing what I’ve always done,” while Juanito Burns Jr. of Los Brown Berets de Nuevo Mexico was quoted as saying, “I do feel he’s a racist, but he’s a racist out of ignorance. He doesn’t know that what he’s doing is wrong.”

The AP story says the hotel owner established language rules because he was worried that workers would talk about him in Spanish. Whitten defended changing names such as “Marcos” to “Mark,” citing the “routine practice at his hotels to change first names of employees who work the front desk phones or deal directly with guests if their names are difficult to understand or pronounce.”

“It has nothing to do with racism,” he said. “I’m not doing it for any reason other than for the satisfaction of my guests, because people calling from all over America don’t know the Spanish accents or the Spanish culture or Spanish anything.”

One fired employee, Martin Gutierrez said, “I don’t have to change my name and language or heritage. I’m professional the way I am.”

The New Mexico chapter of LULAC has stepped in, though Whitten says a LULAC representative referred to him with a racial slur. LULAC denies it.